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UCI Mountain Bike World Cup racing heads west to Bromont, Quebec, after a wet weekend in Mont Saint-Anne, where upsets in the men’s downhill and women’s cross-country rankings renew competition heading into this weekend’s round. Sam Hill (Monster-Specialized) ousted Greg Minnaar (Santa Cruz Syndicate), who suffered a crash last weekend, from the number one spot, while LUNA’s Catharine Pendrel outranked Elisabeth Osl (Central Ghost) thanks to a commanding win at Mont Saint-Anne.

Alberto Contador doesn’t want to stay at Astana even if Lance Armstrong won’t be around next season. According to a report in Thursday’s L’Equipe, the two-time Tour de France winner has turned down a multi-million-euro contract extension and is trying to break his remaining year that he has with the Kazakh-backed team.

Bradley Wiggins, the Garmin-Slipstream rider who has made a spectacularly successful transition from the velodrome to the road, has released his blood profile data for the past year-and-a-half. The 29-year-old Wiggins equaled the best Tour de France finish by a Briton with fourth place in this year’s race and has said he wants to improve on that feat by 2011. The reigning individual pursuit Olympic champion and member of the gold-medal winning team pursuit squad in Beijing said he is fully committed to racing on the road, at least through 2012.

After the successful stage 2 of the Intermontane Challenge in Kamloops, British Columbia, the event suffered a significant setback on day three. A last-minute course change, forced by a suddenly uncooperative local resident, kicked off a disastrous sequence of events that lead to multiple miscues on the course and the day’s results being nullified.

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Meredith Miller (Team Tibco) attacked out of a break to solo across the line for her first stars- and-stripes jersey on Saturday in the women’s elite road race at USA Cycling’s Junior, U23, Elite and Paralympic National Championships in Bend, Oregon.

Concerned that UCI rules for race equipment could be bad for business, several suppliers of UCI-registered teams have formed a coalition to present their concerns to the sport's governing body. The new Global Organization of Cycling Equipment Manufacturers includes most of the major suppliers to ProTour teams, including SRAM, Cannondale, Cervelo, Bianchi, FSA, Specialized and Felts. Phil White, the co-founder of Cervelo and one of the founders of GOCEM, said manufacturers provide about 100 million Euros in annual support of professional cycling.

For the past few seasons Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski's carbon Superfly 29er has hovered around the 21- to 22-pound mark, a respectable weight for an extra large bike with large diameter wheels. But tech breakthroughs have the rig now under 20 pounds.

Marketing manager Adrian Montgomery at Scott USA knows he’s got a good thing going. For one, his brand is on the upswing. After five years back in the U.S. market, Scott bicycles are gaining traction with dealers and riders alike. Scott sponsors the Columbia-HTC team, and with speedster Mark Cavendish racking up wins at a furious clip, the brand is earning more recognition than ever. Plus, with the new Plasma3 TT bike turning heads this spring at the Giro d’Italia, even more people are paying attention to Scott bikes.

Most American cycling fans credit three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond and the first U.S. rider in Tour de France, Jock Boyer, as the two who busted down the door for Lance Armstrong and the current field of U.S. riders in the European peloton. But American boots made the first real dents in Old World cycling’s tradition-bound portico in the early 1970s.

Boulder, CO, USA - July 29, 2009 - Lance Armstrong's personal cycling coach, Chris Carmichael, has published a new training book just as 7-time Tour de France winner Armstrong finished third in his comeback Tour. The Time-Crunched Cyclist: Fit, Fast, and Powerful in 6 Hours a Week presents a new way to achieve competitive fitness and power without the impossible time demands of traditional training methods. The book is available now in bookstores, bike shops, and online.

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Poetic congratulations

The video recap poetry made me smile,

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In the latest issue of VeloNews, we reported that three road races held in Michigan and sponsored by Priority Health had been canceled for 2009 — the May 24 Priority Health Tour de Leelanau, which was to be part of USA Cycling’s Professional Tour, and the September 12 Priority Health Grand Cycling Classic and the September 13 Priority Health Ann Arbor Cycling Classic, each part of USA Cycling’s National Racing Calendar.

Jens in his own words

OUCH-Maxxis' Rory Sutherland has retaken he lead of the National Racing Calendar individual men's standings from Bissell's Tom Zirbel, who held the lead for a few weeks. A fourth place overall at the Cascade Cycling Classic helped Sutherland, who is the defending NRC champ, to take the lead.